Ms Marguerite Sayers:

It is a particular issue and it has been with us for a period of time. Some people are very frustrated, including members of my own family, who say it is preventing them from adopting an EV. My understanding is that the problem has been solved for future apartment blocks that are being built because it is now a part of the regulations for multi-residential units to have to include a level of charging. In the meantime, there are a number of solutions. We are largely reliant on the management companies to install a number of charge points, as the Senator indicated, and there would have to be some scheme among the residents to ensure these are shared adequately.

As to best practice, what I have come across in dense city locations is that when somebody buys an apartment now, the shared ownership of an EV comes with that apartment, so they would already have the infrastructure in the building, they already have a number of vehicles and they book the vehicles. It is a mixture of timeshare and shared ownership, along with electric vehicles.

The other option for people as we are installing these high-powered chargers, or even the 50 kW chargers, is in regard to the additional range. Given the distances are quite short within urban areas, which is where most of our apartment blocks tend to be, if people do travel and they decide not to use the bicycle and they use a car, they could possibly do with charging once a week or once a fortnight at some of our infrastructure or one of the other networks that is out there. When people are sitting in traffic, the beauty of an EV is that it is not emitting anything and it is not losing battery power unless it is moving, so they are very useful within traffic. It could be that people could use public infrastructure and, with 400 km of range, only need to charge it once a week or once a fortnight.

There are a number of things. It is not an ideal situation and in some cases it will go back to that need to have charging based on the public lighting system or using lighting columns. There are a myriad of solutions but no obvious or easy one.